Al Power

December 12, 2009

Winter walk

Out in Waterperry Gardens just outside Oxford for a wintery walk. Lots of Christmas trees for sale, with everything starting to feel very festive.

It's a crisp clear cold day, with no-one about, perfect for a few snaps and clearing the head.

Trying out some wideangle shots of some big blue skies with angry clouds with my canon, but couldn't resist some lofi iPhone snaps, capturing the feel of the place, which are below.

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Filed under // green iPhone leaves winter

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November 15, 2009

Self portraiture with the iPhone as a Liveview Camera Remote

After reading up on butterfly lighting on digital photography school, I decided to give it a go using an off-camera flash setup this afternoon. Bearing in mind my knowledge of portraiture using flash is next to nothing, most of my efforts are very much trial and error (mainly error!) but I was reasonably happy with my results (despite weird expressions I was pulling!).

I used an off-camera flash on a separate tripod, a small flash with attached lightbox, and a reflector to bounce some light back up onto my face. While I found the article on lighting useful, it could have been massively improved by a diagram maybe, and some clearer explanation of the text, as I wasn't 100% sure what some of the terms meant (as people also commented).

One of the frustrating things about self-portraiture is the constant running backwards and forwards adjusting settings and alignments, and after 40 minutes of work you end up with about 10 shots, all out of focus!

I had previously had my eye on the DSLR Camera remote from onOne software for the iPhone when it was announced, and had pretty much forgotten about it until today. Considering I am a) a big geek b) a Canon user and c) an iPhone user, I thought it the perfect time to give it a go, to see if it saved me some time and made my life easier.

At £12 it isn't the cheapest of apps on the store, but considering the features it gives you I considered it a steal, and much cheaper than anything that could give you comparable functionality - a really clever use of technology.

Basically what it does is give you live view through your camera on your iPhone wirelessly, which is connected up to a laptop running the controller software, which is tethered to your camera. Both iPhone and laptop need to be on the same wireless network. Below are some photos of my setup - one of the photos I ended up with (didn't like the noisy background, but this was just a test really), my camera/flash setup (I sat with the reflector on my lap) and a rough impression of what you see on the iPhone when using the iPhone remote app (I didn't have the foresight to screenshot one while using it, so this is a pretty accurate mock up of what I saw).

Having not done much self-portraiture or tethered shooting, what I should have done was read more on flash lighting, then read more of the videos on how to use the live view properly, but what I did was just jump in impatiently and start taking pictures (avoiding all instructions/how-to videos :o) ) so I probably could have got better results with more time spent reading.

What I would like to do more of is learn about portrait lighting, as this is where my skills really fall down, so might well look out for a local course or find some good books on portrait lighting.

When using the liveview remote app, I could control shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, and clicking the live view picture on my iphone focussed my camera, which was the most useful feature in my opinion (when taking self portraits!). Features were very much dependent on what camera you have (see the System Requirements tab), so your mileage may vary. I believe they also support Nikon cameras which is nice for Nikon shooters.

It had several other features, like an intervalometer and various view modes, which I didn't play with. You could switch it between just showing the last picture taken, to showing a live video feed of what your camera was seeing, which was pretty cool.

Overall impression and ease of use: 5/5 - if you have a supported Nikon or Canon camera, an iPhone and laptop on the same wireless network, this is a no-brainer purchase and a most excellent product. I can see photographers who usually shoot tethered using this to stop them having to stare down the lens the whole time, and interact with their subject more, potentially reaping better results.

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Filed under // article iPhone photography portrait

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November 6, 2009

Peaceful Devon beach

Saunton sands beach, Devon. We were the only people crazy enough to be out in this weather, but it's just so beautiful!

Taken with my iPhone (too wet for my larger camera) just before the weather turned and we got hit by a hailstorm, now sitting in the lovely warm Saunton Sands hotel bar drying out with a coffee.

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Filed under // beach iPhone iphoneography togs

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November 5, 2009

Morning commute

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November 4, 2009

Dinner at Giraffe

Nice food and times at Giraffe in Oxford this evening, with Ash, Monika, Adrian and Dave. Photos processed using lofi.

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Filed under // iPhone iphoneography lofi

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November 3, 2009

iPhone photo processing workflow

Playing with various iPhone photo processing apps during my lunchbreak, hence the glass of water subject.

I combined two photos using a LOFI template, colour graded with Mill Colour, then tried various effects using Best Camera. Finally the depth of field effect was applied using TiltShiftGen (all iPhone apps), then uploaded to my blog using Posterous via my phone.

It's amazing how you can take a rather lofi camera (iPhone 3G) and using free or low cost apps come up with interesting processing effects with a simple workflow.